This is a big day for the hackerama and the welfare-industrial complex – the Legislature will be rubber-stamping the graduated income tax onto the 2022 ballot.
Five times Massachusetts voters have said no to having their pockets picked – in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1994 – and the SJC nixed the same heist a few years back.
But now the gimme guys ‘n’ gals figure the seventh time will be the charm. This time, the payroll patriots are only going after “millionaires.” Wink wink nudge nudge.
As usual, this $2 billion theft from taxpayers will be portrayed as an “investment.” It’s only going to transportation and education. Oh sure.
Get ready for the media cheerleaders waving their pom-poms in unison today, telling you this is the greatest thing to come along since the lockdown. But before the slobbering begins, try to remember how the hacks would really be squandering your dough.
Let’s start with “education.” Take UMass — please. There’s a ZooMass-Boston hack professor by the name of Lorna Rivera. She’s worth every penny of the $117,512 she makes every year.
Rivera used to be on the Boston School Committee until last week, when it came out that she liked to text about how she was “sick of Westie whites” — meaning people from West Roxbury, Ward 20.
“Wait until the white racists start yelling at us,” Professor Hack-Rivera texted another woke committee member, who responded, “I hate WR.” (Imagine if she’d said, “I hate R.”)
Racists texting racists about … racism. Your tax dollars at work. Payroll patriot Rivera blamed her problems on, you guessed it, “racism,” and she said she’s quitting to “recuperate.” From what, her own racism?
Moving south, we arrive at UMass-Dartmouth. Did you hear about the New Bedford city councilor Hugh Dunn? He’s facing a criminal complaint of drunken driving after an early-morning crash last month that occurred when he was backing out of a parking space downtown.
The New Bedford cops said that when they found Dunn in his car, at first he couldn’t recall his own name. The statesman was “shaken, confused about the incident, incoherent and was disoriented and complained of head and back injuries.”
Would you care to guess if Dunn worked until recently in the dreaded private or the public sector?
Correct. He was UMass-Dartmouth’s “executive director of economic development and director of South Coast development partnership.”
He was making $86,284.32 a year until he took a buyout last year. Prior to his ZooMass hack job, he was a payroll Charlie for U.S. Rep. William Keating.
But the money from the “millionaires’ tax” won’t just be going to ZooMass layabouts. Some will be ticketed for the state’s “gateway cities.”
Here’s the headline on a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston last week: “Lawrence Man Pleads Guilty to Identity Fraud Charges.”
His name was “John Doe,” because the feds can’t figure out the illegal criminal’s true identity. John — or is it “Juan”? — stole a U.S. citizen’s identity in order to steal “approximately $25,081 in MassHealth benefits that he was not entitled to.”
Vote for the “millionaires’ tax” so that illegal immigrants in the “gateway cities” can steal even more welfare they’re not entitled to.
The hackerama also needs more money for corrupt agencies like the State Police. The latest trooper to get arrested is one Michael Atton of Wrentham. At age 34, he just got on the job last year. His base pay is – was — $80,793, and this year he’d already grabbed an extra $18,743 in overtime and “other” dough.
But now he’s charged with assaulting his wife, the mother of his two young children. Like Councilor Dunn, he was described by the cops as “confused” when they handcuffed him.
Odd behavior for someone who was supposedly vetted. But in the Wrentham Police report his wife “said he is a diagnosed bi-polar person … he denied having any mental health conditions in order to obtain employment.”
Mrs. Atton and her friend at the apartment complex also reported that the law-enforcement professional “has planted alcohol bottles behind her car and photographed them.”
If he can’t save his job, I’m sure Atton will be filing for a pension. It’s the post-arrest m.o. of all of them. They start yelling, “I’m disabled!”
And pensions, disability or otherwise, are yet another reason you should vote for the millionaires’ tax, to keep the gravy train going for these hacks.
Consider Jimmy Coughlin of Dedham, a retired MSP detective captain. His brother Bob was a hack state rep who took over the Mass Biotechnology Council after the indictment of the previous boss, former House Speaker Thomas “Felon” Finneran.
After 29 years on the job, Jimmy Coughlin retired in 2017 and has since been subsisting on a pension of $131,961 a year – that’s $10,997 a month. He ran for Norfolk County sheriff last year, finished third in the Democrat primary.
Last weekend, a 17-year-old kid from Dedham was dragged out of the bottom of Coughlin’s pool after a Dedham High graduation party.
This is your hackerama. This is your welfare-industrial complex. State tax revenues for the fiscal year are already up $4 billion, billions more are on their way from D.C. … but now the non-working classes are banging their tin cups on the steps of the State House, demanding more More MORE!
Go ahead, vote to increase your own taxes. It won’t all go to racists, illegals, alleged drunks, connected hacks and layabouts. Some of it will go to regular waste, fraud and abuse. That’s the Massachusetts way.